VIOLENCE BREAKS HEARTS It's no time for silence When our screens Continually show cruel scenes And society's full of Gun violence, Domestic violence, Mass violence, Police violence, Prenatal violence, Political violence, Racial violence, Glorified violence, And violent words. Blessed are the peacemakers. Seek peace; Speak peace. Kind words matter, Now more than ever!
Racism is a heart problem. The Civil Rights movement ended many racist systems, but many hearts still remain racist.
Racism has frequently been supported by laws and government systems. Getting beyond that isn’t easy.
Ignoring (or denying) the history of racism isn’t wise. Injustice needs to be remembered so that it isn’t repeated.
Racism is deceptive. We, humans, can avoid people because of their skin color and be unaware that we’re doing it.
Racism often operates (both externally and internally) under the cover of darkness. It’s hard to see racism without night vision goggles.
Racism is irrational. It makes no sense to rank animals by the color of their fur or people by their skin color.
Racism is unfair. It judges people differently depending on their skin color, not on their character or ability.
Racism lacks compassion. Racism refuses to listen to and understand people who have been mistreated by racism.
Racism is unethical. It tries to evaluate and prioritize people based on something as insignificant as skin color.
Racism isn’t always aggressive. Sometimes it’s apathetic.
Racism forgets. It doesn’t remember color-based injustice. Racism also forgets many great Americans who gave their life for freedom–runaway slaves, lynching victims, Civil Rights heroes, etc.
Racism is based on insecurity and a perceived need to feel like you’re better than some other people. It’s pride-focused.
Racism is often driven by economic factors. Modern racism was established in the 1,600s as an attempt to justify the economic-based enslavement of people, by declaring them inferior.
Racism is anti-Christian. Christ-followers come from “every kindred and every tribe.”
Racism is wrong. Even the US Declaration of Independences declares that people have God-given, inalienable rights.
Racism is demonic. It’s an unnatural rejection of people, based on their skin color, and is driven by evil spirits.
Spiritual problems need spiritual solutions. Racism is a spiritual problem. The Bible has the solution–Christian Racial Togetherness.
For far
Too many Christians,
God’s glory
Is just a story
Taught by religious oratory.
Don’t seek approval.
Seek repentance.
Strive to align
Your life with God’s will.
To Christ in you
Be true!
Many feelings, desires, and thoughts are demonic. Your conscience warns you and tries to protect you from them. Before you go along with a feeling, desire, or thought, check with your conscience.
The most dangerous demons are the ones trying to fill you and inwardly coerce you with tormenting feelings, desires, and thoughts. However, those demonic feelings, thoughts, and desires are not all powerful. You can learn to resist them, refuse them, and overcome them.
This matters! It’s important who wins the battle between your conscience and demonic feelings, thoughts, and desires.
Inner compulsion, bondage, or obsession are often demonic attacks. The Holy Spirit leads; He doesn’t force. Christians, especially, need to be trained to recognize, resist, and overcome demonic feelings, desires, and thoughts and not to go along with them.
When you see anger, hatred, or violence manifesting, people have turned their self-control over to demons. A country whose people don’t know how to resist inner demons, will experience much hatred, injustice, crime, and violence.
Seven year old, Viola Fletcher, was put to bed on the night of May 31, 1921, in her home in the Greenwood community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Suddenly her family woke her up and told her they had to leave.
Over the next 14 hours a white mob burned, looted, and murdered up to 300 of the residents of Greenwood, a black neighborhood also known as Black Wall Street because of its prosperity. 35 blocks of homes, businesses, schools, and even churches, were destroyed by the mob.
The survivors were rounded up and detained in the Brady Theater, one of the few buildings in Greenwood that was left standing after the massacre. In 2019, I visited the 35 block Greenwood community, which is now mostly vacant lots, and wept as I walked those empty streets.
After the massacre, Oklahoma declared martial law and forcibly put Tulsa’s Black residents into camps, however, they didn’t prosecute a single white person of a crime. Insurance companies refused to pay the survivors’ claims and no one was ever paid any reparations for their losses.
On May 19, 100 years later, the three living survivors, Hughes Van Ellis, Lessie Benningfield Mother Randle, and Viola, testified before the US Congress about the Tulsa Race Massacre. (Watch the video of her here.) Here’s some of what Ms. Fletcher said:
“I will never forget the violence. Black men being shot. Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke. I still see Black businesses being burned. I hear the screams. I live through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not.”
She also said: “I’m here seeking justice and I’m asking my country to acknowledge what happened in Tulsa in 1921.” Wouldn’t you ask that, if you were her?
Here’s one more quote from her speaking in Tulsa: “They murdered people. I still see it today in my mind … I have survived 100 years of painful memories and losses. By the grace of God, I am still here. I have survived. I have survived to tell this story. I believe I am still here to share it with you. Hopefully, now you all will listen to us while we are still here.”
Learn about Tulsa
100 years ago.
It’s something we
All need to know.
Tulsa is the tip of the iceberg of hidden American history that is finally being brought to light. Truth has no color!
Here’s a short video with more of the story.
Inner Christianity As taught by the Bible: Christ in you, Inner rivers of living water, The kingdom of God Is within you, Being led by the Spirit, The Holy Spirit who lives in us, Having the mind of Christ, Live by the Spirit, The eyes of your heart enlightened, Until Christ be formed in you, Revelation by the Spirit, Being taught by God, You do not need anyone to teach you, The Spirit bearing witness With our spirit, I will put My laws in their hearts, Written on tablets of human hearts, Love one another deeply from the heart, The still, small voice, Praying in the Spirit, Words taught by the Spirit, The fruit of the Spirit, The gifts of the Spirit, Dreams and visions, God's Word working in you, Do not quench the Spirit, May the Lord direct your hearts.
Reading the Bible with an open heart leads to experiencing God like the Bible writers experienced Him. Christianity begins within. Without inner Christianity, outward religion is powerless.
The best
Thing
That you
Can do
Is to
Pursue
Jesus.
When I focus on the living Jesus, happiness fills my peripheral vision. The persistent pursuit of the living Jesus is the discovery of unspeakable joy and peace beyond understanding.
Jesus didn’t give His disciples the keys to a church building, but the keys to the kingdom of God. For an amazing inner life, filled with the fruit of the Spirit, read the Bible daily with an open heart.
To pursue the kingdom of God, I have to dismantle my kingdom. “He (Jesus) must increase; I must decrease.”
Jesus and the early Christians taught “deny yourself” and “humble yourself.” They never taught “find yourself.”
Feelings and desires often lead people into self-destructive pursuits. Wisdom and rationality are much better guides.
You already are yourself. There’s no need to “find yourself.” Happiness comes from forgetting self and pursuing a worthy cause. The best way to create happiness is to get your focus off of yourself. If you haven’t been able to drag yourself into happiness, try forgetting about yourself and let happiness sneak up on you.
Calling a patch of weeds a garden won’t produce a harvest. Reality matters. The disinformation highway distorts reality and makes truth a casualty. Changing what you call something doesn’t change what it is.
Just because you want something, doesn’t make it right. Just because you feel something, doesn’t make it true.
Any agenda humans set for a church service is irrelevant. God’s agenda (kingdom) is what matters!
I just heard that Cotton Ivy, former TN Commissioner of Agriculture, was promoted to glory. Read how when I was in college, Cotton helped free me up to love Jesus more!
Cotton Ivy was the Commissioner of Agriculture for the state of Tennessee from 1989-1995. The building in the picture is named after him: the L.H. “Cotton” Ivy Laboratory at Ellington Agricultural Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Once when I was a student at the University of Tennessee Martin, Cotton Ivy asked me and a few of my friends if we would like to go to church with him one night. We said yes, and he drove us to a Pentecostal church in Kennett, Missouri.
I had never been to a Pentecostal church before and had no idea what to expect. (I grew up Presbyterian.) The small building was packed with people. Cotton led my friends and I down to the front row.
To begin the meeting, the preacher stood up and passionately quoted a Bible verse: The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. Then…
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Society says to follow your feelings, desires, and opinions. The Bible says to make them all obey Jesus.
Amazing grace
Gives you power
To replace
Deceptive desires
With what God requires.
Clear out your heart.
Make room for
The living Jesus
To freely work
Inside you.
Inner Christianity is about what the living Jesus is doing inside human hearts. It’s not focused on meetings and events.
When the Christian faith was externalized and began to focus on meetings and rituals instead of on the living Jesus, it lost power. Christianity, without personal observation and direct experience of the living Jesus, is just a shadow of what it is meant to be.
Church is to often about manipulation. Inner Christianity is about liberation from inner bondage.
When they’re not attending church, too many Christians act like they’re indifferent to Jesus and His will. If Christians aren’t thrilled about the living Jesus and passionately following and obeying Him, they’re not “being fed.”
You have free will. You don’t have to obey feelings, desires, and thoughts. Instead, make your feelings, desires, and thoughts obey your conscience.
To obey your feelings, desires, or opinions, when they contradict the voice of God, is sin. The reality of sin causes much human misery and denying sin never overcomes it. Mismanagement of the mind and the will, that used to be called “a sin,” is now frequently called “a disease.”
Racism is an example of sin. Sin isn’t healed by government laws. Its cure is confession and repentance–acknowledgement and turning away from it.
God’s building blocks,
That make you strong,
Are often disguised
As road blocks.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 